1. Field of Invention
This invention is directed to a graphical user interface for an image capture device, such as a scanner.
2. Description of Related Art
Scanners and other types of image capture devices have become ubiquitous office productivity tools for generating electronic images of physical original documents. Once an electronic image of a physical original document has been generated, the electronic image data can be used in an infinite variety of ways to increase the productivity and the product quality of an office. Such image capture devices include desktop scanners, other stand-alone scanners, digital still cameras, digital video cameras, the scanning input portions of digital copiers, facsimile machines and other multi-function devices that are capable of generating electronic image data from an original document, and the like. These image capture devices can also include image databases that store previously captured electronic image data.
However, as the cost of scanners and other image capture devices has dropped and the output quality of the captured electronic image data has improved, scanners and other image capture devices have been provided with an ever-increasing number of controllable features. Similarly, as users have become comfortable with capturing and using electronic image data obtained from original documents, the uses to which the electronic image data has been put, and thus the needed control over the quality and appearance of the electronic image data, have expanded greatly.
In response, standard interfaces between such image capture devices, including those indicated above, and the various application programs that use such captured electronic image data have been developed. These standard interfaces allow standard-compliant image capture devices and standard-compliant applications to easily communicate. One exemplary embodiment of such a standard interface is the TWAIN(trademark) interface. The TWAIN(trademark) interface allows any TWAIN(trademark)-compliant application program to input and use electronic image data using any TWAIN(trademark)-compliant image capture device.
The TWAIN(trademark)-compliant component protocol facilitates communication between application programs and image capture devices, such as those indicated above. One such TWAIN(trademark) image capture device is the XEROX(copyright) DigiPath(trademark) scanner.
The ever-increasing numbers of features provided by image capturing devices such as the Xerox(copyright) DigiPath(trademark) scanner cause users of these image capturing devices to find it increasingly difficult to obtain the desired scanning results. For example, original documents are often provided to an image capture device in such a way that the resulting captured images, when provided to an imaging application, are upside down, rotated 90xc2x0, or cut off. These incorrect orientations occur because the original documents were incorrectly loaded into the image capture device. Typically, image capture devices, such as the exemplary production scanner 100 shown in FIG. 1, have markings on the document handler 130 that indicate how the original documents are to be put into the scanner. Unfortunately, these markings are often, if not usually, ignored when the original documents are loaded into the document handler 130 in favor of a desired orientation of the user. As can be imagined, this is particularly troublesome when a large number of original documents are placed into an automatic document handler in the wrong orientation, such that a large number of essentially unusable image capture operations are performed.
This invention thus provides systems, methods and graphical user interfaces that allow the user to select the orientation of an image capture operation of an original document.
This invention separately provides systems, methods and graphical user interfaces that indicate to an operator the orientation an original document should have when fed into the image capture device to obtain a captured image having the desired orientation
In various exemplary embodiments of the systems, methods and graphical user interfaces of this invention, a document orientation portion, or input document mimic, of the graphical user interfaces provides a visual indication to the user of the orientation of the original documents to be captured that will result in the desired orientation of the captured image being obtained. In particular, based on various selected image capture parameters input by the user, the systems, methods and graphical user interfaces of this invention determine and display one or more visual cues to the user that indicate the orientation of the original document that will allow the image capture device to capture an image of the original document that corresponds to the image capture parameters selected by the user. In various other exemplary embodiments of the systems, methods and graphical user interfaces of this invention, an image orientation portion of the graphical user interfaces allows the user to specify the orientation of the original document to be used when capturing an image of the original documents. In response, the systems, methods and graphical user interfaces of this invention aid the user in selecting the proper other image capture parameters that should be used with the selected orientation of the original document.
These and other features and advantages of this invention are described in or are apparent from the following detailed description of various embodiments of the systems, methods and graphical user interfaces according to this invention.